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Playing as a front court player.

Hi,

I have been spotted by my opponents numerous times that when I am a front court player, I struggle to help my backcourt partner out. Simply because I do not know how to position myself to help cover the court. Also, there are shots that my partner told me to get but unfortunately I could not tell if I can get it or not. I am wondering how to players feel their judgments for their shots and coverage on the court?

Try to do a search on youtube. There are videos there on court coverage by Lee Jae Bok. Basically, it tells you that you place yourself on the court depending on what situation you're in. You channel when you attack, you spread when your partner under pressure.

Very basically speaking as the front player you should position your back to your partner. This has an effect in that your feet position will now be covering the diagonals.

For example your partner is deep in the forehand rearcourt, hopefully able to play a drop or smash down the line , you will now be slightly biased body position to this side, if your partner was under pressure in reaching this corner your feet position will enable you to cover the diagonal to your backhand rearcourt. You cant expect him to recover from this forehand rearcourt over to the backhand rearcourt if he was late in the first place.

The opposite will happen if he was under pressure in the back hand rear corner. Change your feet position to cover the empty rearcourt space if your partner is in trouble, which basically means turn your back on your partner!!

You must always remember to commit to the net but be mindfull of the empty corner behind you. Its easier to return to a base position on the same side if your under extreme pressure in tha rear corner.

Hope this makes sense to you.

Go on court, ask your partner to move from one rearcourt corner to the other, you can then experiment with turning your back to him relative to the corner he's moved to. You will then see that your feet now cover this empty corner as if you were about to chasse to it.

Remember not to stay too far forward. The farther back your partner is, the farther back you should be, and position yourself so that you don't block the straight smash, and you can cover the crosscourt return.